,--you may guess with
what result, moral and philosophical.

Andrew Swift used to say to his wife, that, when Dexter was studying his
thoughts, it was better to hear him than the minister: and verily he did
put time-serving to shame by the distinct integrity of his warm speech,
and his eloquence of action.

Dexter married Jessie the day before he opened his flag-shop. She had
long been employed by his employer, and when she promised to be his, she
drew her earnings from the bank, and invested all with him. This was not
prudence, certainly, but it was love. Dexter might have failed in
business the first year,--might have died, you know, in six months, or
even in three, as men do sometimes. It was not prudence; but
Jessie--young lady determined on settlements!--Jessie was looking for
life and prosperity, as the honest and earnest and young have a right to
look in a world God created and governs. And if failure and death had in
fact choked the path that promised so fair, clear of regret, free of
reproaches, glad even of the losses that proved how love had once
blessed her, she would have buried the dead, and worked for the
retrieval of fortune.

They began their housekeeping-romance back of the shop in two little
rooms. Do you require the actual measurement? There have been wider
walls that could contain greatly less.

"How big was Alexander, pa?
The people called him _great_."

They considered the sixpences of their outlay and income with a purpose
and a spirit that made a miser of neither. But there was no delusion
indulged about the business. Jessie never mistook the hilarity of Silas
for an indication of incalculable prosperity. Silas never understood her
gravity for that of discontent and envy. They never spent in any week
more than they earned. They counted the cost of living, and were
therefore free and rich. "She was never alone," as Sir Thomas Overbury
said of that happy milkmaid, "but still accompanied with old songs,
honest thoughts, and prayers, but short ones." And Dexter loved her with
a valiant constancy that spoke volumes for both.

His days were spent, according to the promise advertised, in endeavors
to please the public; but, oh, if the public that traded with and liked
to patronize him, if the young lads and the old boys who hung about his
counters, could have seen him when he shut his shop-door behind him, and
went into the back-room where Jessie and he devised the patterns, where
she e